Hookers, Clients Take Class To Avoid Jail

April 1, 1991|By JIM Di PAOLA, Staff Writer

No one in this country is ever sentenced to death for committing a misdemeanor. Yet each month, on the average, three women arrested on a charge of solicitation for prostitution in Palm Beach County learn they may be condemned to death.

They are diagnosed as having the AIDS virus.

``What`s the penalty for solicitation?`` Circuit Judge William Bollinger asked. ``Sixty days in the County Jail. What`s the penalty for AIDS? Death.``

To prevent the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, Bollinger offers first-time offenders of solicitation a choice: a jail stint or a class called Risk Education for Sex Offenders.

Since its inception in February 1990, about 70 men from Boca Raton, Delray Beach and Boynton Beach have attended the AIDS-prevention course. They have come from all walks of life: They are drug addicts, construction workers and wealthy businessmen. Many are married or have girlfriends.

The streetwalkers attend the class in West Palm Beach, where about 1,000 people throughout the county have taken the $20 course.

What they get for the money is a two-hour lesson from Michele Egan-Byron, a nurse who has been taught by sexuality experts Masters and Johnson.

Tuesday was a slow day for Egan-Byron. She had only seven students instead of the usual 30. Two were women, five were men. One of the men was a transvestite and wore more makeup than the women.

Police say such men make as much money as the women streetwalkers because the customers do not know they are being serviced by a man.

Egan-Byron has no high expectations of what this course can do. She says the class cannot change the world. Instead, she tries to let the offenders know the risks they are taking and then teaches them prevention.

It`s an unusual sight, seeing the men and women, who usually meet anonymously in the night, sitting shoulder to shoulder and talking about safe sex. To lessen the uneasiness, Egan-Byron jumps right into her lesson.

After watching a 20-minute videotape about AIDS, Egan-Byron begins firing questions at her students.

``Do you die of AIDS?`` Egan-Byron asks.

A man in his 40s says yes.

Egan-Byron frowns. One of the streetwalkers pipes in.

``No, you die of whatever disease you catch from it,`` the streetwalker says.

``How do you guys know you`re not going to have sex with someone who is HIV positive?`` Egan-Byron asks the customers, referring to the AIDS virus. ``Because you`re not going to bed with somebody who weighs 80 pounds and has sores all over their body? Is that it?``

``No,`` a woman in her 20s says.

``Why?`` Egan-Byron shoots back.

``Because they look like you and me.``

Police say it is difficult to make an arrest for solicitation.

``It takes a lot to do a sting,`` Delray Beach Sgt. Geoff Williams said while patrolling northern parts of the city last week. ``First you have to get male undercover officers to pick up all the women. Then you have to put women officers on the street to pick up the men.``

``The biggest problem is the health issue,`` Williams said. ``But the prostitutes sometimes rip the johns off. The prostitute will set the guy up and the pimp will rob him. But that doesn`t happen too often.``

The streetwalkers have certain hot spots they like to walk, mostly on North Federal Highway, straight through to southern areas of Boynton Beach. The traffic is heavy and there is a chain of small hotels that sell rooms by the hour.

When Williams patrols the streets, he knows a handful of prostitutes who prefer the more westerly parts of town near Northwest Fourth Avenue and Northwest First Street.

As he drives by the two churches, Williams sees a streetwalker who has been arrested before.

The woman says she was born and raised in Delray Beach. She`s 28 and has two sons, one 14, the other 12. She dropped out of Boca Raton High School.

She says she knows the risk of selling her body for sex; the physical abuse and the risk of sexually transmitted diseases. Still, she continues to hustle.

``It`s for a lot of different things, and people do it for a lot of different circumstances,`` she said.

Williams has a more direct answer: drugs.

``For the prostitutes I see, this is their only means of income. Most of them are on some kind of dope. The men break into houses and steal things. The women streetwalk to support their habit.``

The way Williams views prostitution is similar to the views of Egan-Byron and Bollinger.

``It`s not prostitution, it`s an addiction to drugs,`` Egan-Byron. ``The women will do anything when they`re addicted to support their habit. And they will engage in risky behavior because they need to be high and will do anything to get a cocaine rock.

``And if you tell people who have taken drugs for 15 years to just stop, it is like telling a manic depressive to have a nice day.``

Egan-Byron hopes the women, who many times return to prostitution, will at least practice safe sex. The customers, on the other hand, rarely are seen again in court.